Data from: Not the time or the place: the missing spatio-temporal link in publicly available genetic data

Genetic data are being generated at unprecedented rates. Policies of many
journals, institutions and funding bodies aim to ensure that these data
are publicly archived so that published results are reproducible.
Additionally, publicly archived data can be ‘repurposed’ to address new
questions in the future. In 2011, along with other leading journals in
ecology and evolution, Molecular Ecology implemented mandatory public data
archiving (the Joint Data Archiving Policy). To evaluate the effect of
this policy, we assessed the genetic, spatial and temporal data archived
for 419 data sets from 289 articles in Molecular Ecology from 2009 to
2013. We then determined whether archived data could be used to reproduce
analyses as presented in the manuscript. We found that the journal's
mandatory archiving policy has had a substantial positive impact,
increasing genetic data archiving from 49 (pre-2011) to 98%
(2011–present). However, 31% of publicly archived genetic data sets could
not be recreated based on information supplied in either the manuscript or
public archives, with incomplete data or inconsistent codes linking
genetic data and metadata as the primary reasons. While the majority of
articles did provide some geographic information, 40% did not provide this
information as geographic coordinates. Furthermore, a large proportion of
articles did not contain any information regarding date of sampling (40%).
Although the inclusion of spatio-temporal data does require an increase in
effort, we argue that the enduring value of publicly accessible genetic
data to the molecular ecology field is greatly compromised when such
metadata are not archived alongside genetic data.